Dismissed By Slovak Court Babis Takes StB Case To European Human Rights Court

Andrej Babis

Prague, June 8 (CTK) – Czech PM Andrej Babis (ANO) will file a lawsuit against Slovakia with the European Human Rights Court over his registration as the former Communist secret police’s (StB) agent after his appellate review petition in the dispute was rejected, ANO spokeswoman Lucie Kubovicova told CTK today.

 

The Slovak Supreme Court has rejected Babis’s petition for an appellate review in his dispute with the Slovak Nation’s Memory Institute (UPN) about his registrations in the StB files, which he considered unrightful, the server Dennik N reported today.

 

Babis, a billionaire businessman of Slovak origin, announced on Wednesday that he would turn to the European Human Rights Court to sue Slovakia and he will file the lawsuit by mid-June.

 

Kubovicova referred to the statements Babis made on the case on Wednesday.

 

“If media say I lost a court dispute over [my clearance as a former] StB [agent], it is a lie, since I won the dispute and I will win again. By June 15, I will file a lawsuit against Slovakia with the European Court of Human Rights,” Babis said on Wednesday after his second appointment as PM following his first cabinet’s failure to win the confidence of parliament.

 

Zeman’s spokesman Jiri Ovcacek said on Babis’s court dispute that it had not ended yet.

 

Slovak courts started dealing with Babis’s alleged collaboration with the StB in January 2012 when Babis filed a legal complaint against the UPN, administering the StB files on Babis in its archive, with a Bratislava court, claiming he was registered as an StB agent unrightfully.

 

The Slovak lower-level courts previously ruled in favour of Babis, but the Slovak Constitutional Court (US) cancelled the definitive verdicts of the regional and supreme courts.

 

The Regional Court in Bratislava rejected Babis’s lawsuit challenging his registration as an StB agent in February. Babis filed a petition for appellate review, which the Supreme Courts turned down.

 

The US ruled that the UPN should not be the defendant in the disputes over the registration in the StB archives, which was a breakthrough verdict.

 

The US also stated that in the Babis case, Slovak courts wrongly based their verdicts on the testimony of former StB officers who had not been relieved of their duty of confidentiality. The US also challenged the trustworthiness of these witnesses who had testified in favour of Babis and their testimonies were crucial in the original proceedings..

 

The European Court of Human Rights, established by the Council of Europe (CE) for its member states and seated in Strasbourg, cannot thwart a judiciary decision in the respective country. It can only rule that the country has violated the particular human rights of the complainant in the assessment of his case and order the state to pay compensation and cover the complainant’s court costs.